


Irene

by Dominatrix



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: A little love too, F/M, Hurt, I may write some prequel to this, Sherlock's Past, This is FAR too painful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-09
Updated: 2012-11-09
Packaged: 2017-11-18 08:02:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dominatrix/pseuds/Dominatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What happened to Irene Adler?”<br/>She knew that the name was going to bring back the memory; she knew that it would hurt, but she had to torture him right now. He was not himself any longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Irene

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wondered whether Irene Adler would come up in "Elementary." And obviously she does - yay :) Always loved her best, just such an awesome character.  
> So this is the expansion of the last scene in Episode Six, in which Joan asks who Irene was.  
> As said in the tags, I may do something about the time when she and Sherlock met. Please let me know whether you're interested :)

The way he looked at her – no, not at, but _through_ her, as if she was made of glass – slivered her heart in a thousand pieces. He did not seem to notice her, and Joan could tell for sure that he was far away, too far for her to reach him. His eyes weren’t focused on her although she took a few steps towards him. She could have stretched her arms out to touch him. She didn’t.

“Who is Irene?” She wasn’t sure whether she even wanted to know this, because she had some impressions that haunted her thoughts. _A woman with large and striking tattoos on her body, barely dressed as she sneaked out the house in the middle of the night; handcuffs in the living room, fixed too high for practice in picking locks but not too high for doing other things…_ Yes, Sherlock was kind of weird in this way, but this Irene, whoever she was, meant something different to Sherlock. Joan had never seen her companion so utterly shocked and absolutely neutral at the same time.

He was trying to hide; he was as brilliant in hiding things he did not want anybody to see as in revealing things other people did not want anybody to see. Maybe he was far too overwhelmed and surprised by her question – which seemed highly improbable – or he did not want to hide any longer. Because he had been hiding all the time and now was completely sick of it.

“She was a woman. The woman. The only woman that had ever mattered in my entire life.” Joan wasn’t sure whether she should be upset because Sherlock did not regard her as a woman who mattered, but in the end she decided to leave it like this. He was puzzled and she wanted him to talk about his past, not about their present.

“Where is she now?” Joan asked quietly.

“East Finchley.”

“So, in England?” she assumed. The name East Finchley rang a bell in her mind, but she did not know why. She made a plan to google it later.

“Yes. Third row on the right when you pass the gate, twenty-one steps forward. It is a wonderful stone, dark marble. It doesn’t even have a name written on it. Which one should I have picked for her? She had many names, but only one was true. I was one of the few she told her real name.”

He smiled lightly, the right corner of his mouth twitched upwards before it fell rapidly and the shadows returned to cloud his eyes.

“Beatrice Stapleton. Natalie St. Clair. Gwendolyn Norton. Emily Hudson. Madeleine Lestrade. That’s how she was known in her profession. But to me, she will always be Irene Adler.”

“Who was she?”

Sherlock did not want to clear this matter up, he kept silent, pressing his lips together until nothing but a pale line was left. Evidently, he wasn’t going to say anything. Joan remembered why she knew the place Holmes talked about. She had started to get suspicious when he mentioned the row where she was. The colour of stone gave the final proof.

“She is dead now, isn’t she?”

Her words seemed to influence Sherlock as if he was struck by lightning. He went all pale in a sudden, death on his face and terrible pain in his eyes.

“What happened to her, Sherlock?”

He trembled; his knees got weak and he sank against Joan, not unconscious, but totally out of control of both body and mind. Joan hardly managed to get him on the armchair, because he was heavy and tall and as vital as a puppet. She was cowering down beside him, her hands on his forehead and the look of a doctor on her face.

“You’re as cold as death” she murmured, more to herself than to him. He wouldn’t hear it anyway. Even if she had screamed, Sherlock wouldn’t have noticed. Not now.

“She was the enemy. How could the enemy be so tempting if she were so simple in mind after all? She had a great mind; why did she just throw it away for nothing? Why couldn’t she just stay where she was safe? Why would she do this for somebody that wasn’t worth the pain?”

“Sherlock!” Joan tried to get him back into reality, because he drifted off at this very moment, back in time, to a point where Joan could not get him back. It was somewhere far away, years before Joan had even known the name Sherlock Holmes.

“Yes!” It was as if she had been waking him from a nightmare; he sat straight in the armchair in seconds, his hands raised in defence and his eyes wide opened, looking around like a deer that was chased by a pack of hounds. Joan cupped his face with her hands and forced him to look at her. “What happened to Irene Adler?” She knew that the name was going to bring back the memory; she knew that it would hurt, but she had to torture him right now. He was not himself any longer.

“She did not belong to us. I met her at a case. She was on the other side – the side that brought her far more profit. But she did not only do it for the money...She liked it. She liked tricking people, setting them on false tracks, watching them suffer while she was laughing in her own little castle. She was far too good in what she was doing, and so was I. I was set on her tracks. The order was easy: Find her. Kill her. Mission over. I found her, and I knew that I was obliged to convey her whereabouts to my colleagues. But I couldn’t. It took me almost three months to find her. She was so clever; hiding her own tracks and making me believe that I almost had her. In the end I think I only found her because she wanted me to find her. She was curious why I followed her and how I found her. She and I...We were the same. Both great minds, lost in a world where limited intellect spread like a disease. She had found a way to use her abilities, and so had I. But we chose different sides, and we both knew that we could never be together.”

He stopped for a moment, and Joan thought – yeah, maybe she _hoped_ – that he was going to grin at her and mock her for being so naive to believe this story. Sadly, he didn’t. He was just catching his breath and continued.

“I spared her life. I don’t know why I did this, can’t remember. It would’ve been a pity to waste such a personality just to follow my orders. Maybe I saw a little bit too much of me in her. I just couldn’t sell her out to the Secret Service; I really couldn’t. I didn’t see her for months. Thought she had forgotten me. I hadn’t. But I thought that to her I was just a mean to her plan, a tool and nothing more. At this time the thought almost ripped me apart. Today I wish it had been that way. I never saw her again.”

“How do you know she’s dead?” Joan didn’t even dare to ask this question willingly, it just slipped out of her mouth before she could draw it back.

“She died in a plane crash, six months ago. Her corpse was never found, she has probably been burned in the fire after the plane hit the ground. She was the only passenger; the pilot and the stewardess were terrorists, destined to be killed in this crash. They volunteered for it, I checked their mails. Apparently, Irene was dressed up like a man in his thirties, rather slim, almost haggard at this time. A drug-addict, her hair hid under a wig of short, dark hair. They were perfectly sure it was the right one they had kidnapped.”

Joan frowned. “They wanted to have you?”

He nodded. “I crossed their plans. They wanted revenge. Irene knew of it. She hacked into my e-mail-account and sent a mail to one of them, telling them my whereabouts. At this time, I already was in rehab and I had no idea what was going on outside. They found her because she wanted to be found, because she wanted rather her own death than mine.”

His voice had grown lower and lower, to a barely audible whisper. “She sent me an e-mail shortly before it happened. She must have known what would happen to her, but she didn’t care.”

“What did she write?”

“ _Now we’re even._ I saved her life, she saved mine. Sometimes I wish she hadn’t.”

Joan couldn’t speak for a while, she was far too terrified. It all made sense. Sherlock’s panic of the plane crash, his addiction to find a solution, to arrest the murderer. It was all linked to this woman.

“You have never found the ones that killed her?”

“Never.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

He lifted his head; he had let it sink down on his chest to escape from Joan’s tender caress. All of a sudden he looked decades older, careworn and tired. It made her want to burst out in tears.

“It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

Probably the question Joan was about to ask would only make everything worse, but she had to ask, it burned in her chest and the words wanted to creep out of her mouth.

“Did you love her?”

He rose in a second, but he didn’t even look at Joan. He just paced through the room, slowly, relaxed, as if he was doing a walk on Sunday afternoon, the sun on his face and the singing of birds around him. Joan was left behind; still waiting for an answer, but the sound when Sherlock’s bedroom door was slammed shut answered the question more clearly than Sherlock could have with a million words.


End file.
